Posted on 09/24/2007 8:00:15 PM PDT by Red Steel
WASHINGTON -- -- Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.
The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane's wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.
That detail would escape notice for 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.
The episode, serious enough to trigger a rare "Bent Spear" nuclear incident report that raced through the chain of command to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Bush, provoked new questions about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military's attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by the Washington Post point to security failures at multiple levels in North Dakota and Louisiana, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials briefed on the initial results of an Air Force investigation.
The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
There were no protests on the arab streets or in a major way in the arab capitals. The reason for that is mostly because the leaders in the arab capitals trust Israel with nukes more than they trust Syria or Iran with nukes.
They all know that Israel does not want their territory. Iran and Syria want to control it all. They were actually happy Israel did what they did.
No protests in Damascus or Tehran, either...
Um, hate to break it to you, but it happened. The question is how and perhaps why. This story should scare the beejesus out of everyone.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295797,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090500762.html
As an ordnanceman, loader or BB stacker you as well as I (EOD) know that the CG point of attachment changes when the W80 warhead is installed. The “handling” gear they used would have to be configured for full or empty to load it. Uncle Sugars Wind Force couldn’t have made this many errors in a long chain of events required before a move is made.
Munitions control would have had each of those ACM’s by serial number listed as full up or empty on their data grease board as well in digital and paper files. The noooook munitions team leader, the load team at the aircraft, the WSO on the BUFF, The AC Commander, The enlisted Crew Chief for the AC, the flight safety officer, command post on main base..... wayyyyyyyyyy too many FUBARS to think for one minute this was a Ooooops by the Wing Nuts on the ground and in the air etc etc etc etc etc ............ô¿ô¬
Did the the munitions line-delivery crew think the AGM-129s were trainers? If they were the real AGM-129s, then were was security police escort to convoy them to the plane? where's the no-lone-zone cordon on the tarmac with 360 degree view coverage? The cops just left? The load crew has to sign for the weapons before they gain custody - where's the chain of custody receipt? Or are the load crew and delivery crew the same? if not, they didn't recognize the weapons? If this was to be special shipment to Bardsdale, Where's the Munitions Custodian or MASO to personally verify the nuke shipment?
So many more questions...?
Several somebodies didn’t do their job.
This is from the WP article:
An Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the central United States last week with six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads that were mistakenly attached to the airplane’s wing, defense officials said yesterday.
The Stratofortress bomber, based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was transporting a dozen Advanced Cruise Missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on Aug. 30. But crews inadvertently loaded half of them with nuclear warheads attached.
Air Force officials said the warheads were not activated and at no time posed a threat to the public. But a timeline of the episode supplied by the Air Force yesterday to House and Senate lawmakers indicated that the missiles in question sat on a runway in Louisiana for nearly 10 hours before workers noticed that the nuclear warheads were inside.
Military officials also said they were concerned that the warheads were unaccounted for several hours while the missiles were in transit. The missiles never left Air Force control, they said.
The cruise missiles — part of an Air Force fleet of more than 400 of their kind — are being retired and usually would not carry nuclear warheads while being transported. Defense officials said the B-52’s mission last week did not include training runs, so the missiles were never meant to be launched. The cruise missiles have a range of about 2,000 miles and are designed to hit precision targets well behind a potential enemy’s lines.
Two defense officials said it is unclear how stringent safeguards for the handling of nuclear weapons were skirted, allowing the missiles with the warheads to be loaded onto a pylon that was then attached to the underside of the B-52’s wing. Air Force officials said the mistake was a serious breach of rules and that an investigation began immediately.
My thoughts exactly.
There may have been fissionable material in the ordnance but there's no way in Hades that they were capable of being armed or detonated.
No convoy commander...hello Munitions Control...hello Command Post. This is weird. What are they doing at Minot?
what’s the difference??? If nuclear weapons were indeed transported somewhere....makes little difference other than the security breach....you don’t drop a nuke on someone...it will not detonate unless programmed to do so and the proceedure to do so is more than a little bit complicated....it is either our intention to detonate the weapon....or it doesn’t happen!!!
Right, you can drop them them from orbit....
While it may not have been fissionable, if dropped from altitude, wouldn’t it make one heck of a dirty bomb?
WITH the “physics package”!
Minot AFB - United States Nuclear Forces
In 1988, the Air Force selected Minot AFB for the Commander-in-Chief's Installation Excellence Award. This presidential award recognizes those military installations that combine mission excellence with the concern for people to produce working and living conditions truly above other installations.
(emphasis added)
Could things have fallen apart so very badly after less than twenty years?
At so very many points in the chain?
This all seems fishy to me.
I'm not familiar with the stress tolerances of the particular casing used on theses devices. Many variables. It is very possible.
However, I have good reason to believe that there was no plutonium on board these devices.
More, I cannot say.
Forty years ago was 1967. That was the absolute height of the cold war. The US Air Force loaded up live nukes every day and flew toward the USSR and then returned. There were nukes in the sky over the continental United States every day. The purpose of this was to insure that regardless of what happened in a first strike by the USSR, there was enough ordinance in the air and on missiles and subs to render the enemy into a smoking cinder. What else did the Washington Post get wrong in this article?
I don’t buy the accident story. There is nothing more heavily guarded and closely inventoried than a nuke. Even if they didn’t have all the parts inserted, there is no way that nuclear warheads could be “accidentally” put in plain “cylinders” alongside conventional or unarmed missiles. I’m not speaking from any kind of personal experience, but I’m quite sure that the military puts their nukes in special storage and there is no way they can be taken out without orders from on high. If nukes were indeed on that plane, it is because someone ordered nukes to be on that plane.
2. WTF is a "flight officer"? This is not the RAF and we haven't had any since WWII.
3. How could a reporter so ignorant of facts 1 and 2 know what a "Bent Spear" is unless tutored by someone who wanted them (and everyone else) to know the information?
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